U.S. stock markets: Live updates

Wells Fargo is offering up its perspective on the recent weakness in equities and September seasonality.

“The credit calendar is the main driver of seasonal stock/bond weakness, in our view,” said Chris Harvey, head of equity strategy in a Thursday note to clients.

“September’s credit deluge (and damage) likely will occur in the two weeks prior to FOMC (Sep 20) as bond investors sell/short Treasuries for new credit positions,” he added.

— Samantha Subin

Copper prices reached their lowest levels in nearly two weeks, as investors around the world fretted over the impact of higher Fed rates on the global economy. Futures hit a low of $3.739 per pound — a level not seen since Aug. 25.

Copper is seen by many as a gauge on the world economy given its range of uses, which stretch from construction to electronics, among others.

— Fred Imbert, Gina Francolla

Two ETFs focused on clean energy reached lows not seen in multiple years during Thursday’s session.

The Invesco Solar ETF (TAN) was last down nearly 3% in the session and touched its lowest point since September 2020. Maxeon Solar and JinkoSolar led the fund down, with both sliding around 6%.

Meanwhile, the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) was last down more than 1% and hit its lowest since August 2020. With a drop of more than 5%, Sunnova Energy was the worst performer in the ETF

— Alex Harring, Gina Francolla

The likelihood that inflation numbers are going to remain stubbornly high for a while could mean more interest rate increases, former St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said Thursday.

In a CNBC interview, the the current dean of the Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business at Purdue University raised the prospect of more policy tightening as core inflation is stuck around 4%.

“That’s raising the risk that the Fed will have to follow through on its promise rate increase sometime in the next couple of meetings, and there’s some risk that they’d have to go a little bit higher even from there,” Bullard told CNBC’s Steve Liesman.

Inflation numbers “have got to come down into the 3% range, and eventually the 2% range, and if that is not happening and they hang up too high, the Fed may have to do more,” he said.

—Jeff Cox

Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman said Thursday the stock market could be stagnant for an extended period of time, adding that he’s standing by his recession call.

“I don’t expect we see a new high in the market for a long time,” Cooperman said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve had a very bad policy mix, and part of the strength this year has been very simulative fiscal policy and restrictive monetary policy.”

— Yun Li

Barclays downgraded shares of Seagate Technology to equal weight from an overweight rating, citing weaker fundamentals and a longer-than-anticipated recovery.

“Nearline recovery is a ‘finger in the air’ exercise at this point and likely comes later than advertised and the stock trades at 30x our CY24 numbers,” analyst Tom O’Malley in a Thursday note to clients.

While normalizing server spending should benefit the company in the next year, he noted that hard drive deployment encompass later stages of the artificial intelligence boon.

“We understand this is a name that trades on momentum and think many will point to ’25, but we step to the sideline here with a PT of $65 as its clear this is taking much longer and the stock has run,” O’Malley wrote.

Shares plunged more than 8% during early morning trading, with the price target suggesting about 9% downside from Wednesday’s close.

— Samantha Subin

Valvoline‘s sell-off is a buying opportunity, according to Wells Fargo.

While electric vehicles present a long-term risk, “recent underperformance is sharp and we see opportunity,” said analyst David Lantz. He initiated coverage of the auto repair stock at overweight.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more about his decision here. Shares were last up 1.3%.

— Alex Harring

Stocks opened lower Thursday.

The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.5%, falling for a fourth straight day, while the S&P 500 slumped 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near the flatline.

— Samantha Subin

Maybe the strong dollar is another September headwind for the stock market.

The dollar index Thursday is on pace for its fifth straight daily advance, near a six-month high, and headed for an eighth straight weekly gain — the latter for the first time since February 2015. The index measures the dollar against six leading currencies, but mostly the euro and the Japanese yen.

The onshore Chinese yuan (which isn’t in the index) is at its weakest since Dec. 2007, while the euro and the British pound (in the index) are at three-month lows.

While the strong dollar helps American tourists in Paris, the problem for stocks is that it raises the cost of U.S. exports, damaging U.S. competiveness, and diminishes the value of profits earned outside the U.S. when translated back into greenbacks.

— Scott Schnipper, Gina Francolla

A round of economic data Thursday morning showed a tight labor market in which costs are rising more than expected.

Initial jobless claims totaled a seasonally adjusted 216,000 for the week ended Sept. 2, a drop of 13,000 from the previous period and below the Dow Jones estimate for 230,000, the Labor Department reported. Continuing claims, which run a week behind, totaled 1.679 million, down 40,000 and below the FactSet estimate for 1.725 million.

A separate report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that unit labor costs, a calculation of hourly compensation minus productivity, increased 2.2% in the second quarter, higher than the 1.9% estimate.

Nonfarm productivity, or output per hour, increased 3.5% for the quarter, a 0.2 percentage point downward revision but 0.1 percentage point above the forecast, the BLS said.

—Jeff Cox

Here are Thursday’s biggest premarket movers:

• WestRock — Shares added 6.7% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company is nearing a merger with Europe’s Smurfit Kappa in a deal that could create a global paper and packaging giant worth around $20 billion.
• Apple — Apple shares fell 2.9% after Bloomberg News reported China is planning to extend a ban on iPhone use to state-owned corporations.
• Dutch Bros — The drive-through coffee chain dropped 5.8% in premarket trading after it announced a public offering of $300 million in shares of its Class A common stock after market close Wednesday.

Read here for the full list of stocks on the move.

— Pia Singh

McDonald’s shares advanced about 1% in premarket trading after Wells Fargo upgraded the stock to overweight and said the fast-food chain was “firing on all cylinders.”

“Despite well-telegraphed deceleration, we see upside to 2H,” analyst Zachary Fadem told clients. And even after beating same-store comparable stats in the first and second quarter, “we believe MCD is just getting started.”

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full story here.

— Alex Harring

Apple shares fell more than 2% after Bloomberg News reported China is planning to extend a ban on iPhone use to state-owned corporations. A day earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported the China was moving to prohibit iPhone usage in government agencies.

Bank of America’s Savita Subramanian said the bank expects the equal-weighted version of the S&P 500 to outperform the cap-weighted version of the index. “Why? (1) profits growth troughed in 2Q, and investors tend to become price sensitive as growth accelerates. (2) value stocks are historically inexpensive; and(3) our regime model shifted to Recovery, which favors deep value.”

— Fred Imbert, Michael Bloom

China’s exports and imports fell less than expected in August, declining 8.8% and 7.3% year on year respectively.

This is less steep than the fall of 9.2% in exports and 9% in imports expected by economists polled by Reuters.

The country’s trade balance came in at $68.36 billion, less than the $80.6 billion seen in June and also lower than the $73.9 billion expected in the Reuters poll.

— Lim Hui Jie

Australia’s trade surplus for July came in at 8.04 billion Australian dollars ($7 billion), almost a third lower than June’s revised figure of AU$10.27 billion.

This figure was also lower than the AU$10 billion surplus expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Exports fell 2% on a monthly basis, led by a fall in driven by non-monetary gold, while imports were 2.5% higher, driven by imports of non-industrial transport equipment.

— Lim Hui Jie

India’s consumer market is set to become the world’s third largest by 2027 as the number of middle- to high-income households rise, according to a report by BMI.

The report predicted that growth in India’s household spending per capita will outpace that of other developing Asian economies like Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand at 7.8% year-on-year.

BMI estimates India’s household spending will exceed $3 trillion as disposable income rises by a compounded 14.6% annually until 2027. By then, a projected 25.8% of Indian households will reach $10,000 in annual disposable income.

“The majority of these households will be located in the economic centres, such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The wealthier households are mainly located in urban areas, making it easy for retailers to target their key target markets,” BMI said. 

Read the full story here.

— Charmaine Jacob

October West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil contracts touched an intraday $88.08 per barrel Wednesday, the highest price since Nov. 15, 2022, when crude traded at $88.68 a barrel. (A barrel of oil holds 42 gallons). WTI is hiugher by 9.1% so far in 2023.

November Brent contracts, the global benchmark, closed at $90.60 a barrel Wednesday and are ahead by 5.5% in 2023.

September RBOB gasoline futures (the RBOB stands for reformulated blendstock for oxygenate blending) rose 0.80% Wednesday to $2.6014 a gallon, up 5.8% for the year-to-date.

— Scott Schnipper, Gina Francolla